Network Printer Control

Have Windows default setting of the default printer be network dependent, similar to how the Windows used to work. Network Printer Control (NPC) for Windows 8 & 10, both 32-bit & 64-bit, is an example of a utility I wrote to solve a problem I found myself dealing with. In this case, when I upgraded the laptop that I use as my main home & work machine from Windows 7 Ultimate to Windows 10 Pro, I suddenly found that the way Windows 10 (& Windows 8, apparently) managed the default printer stank. Really stank. Under Windows 7 ( "Device and Printers -> Printers and Faxes" -> "Manage default printers"), I had a default printer set for every network that my laptop had to encounter at my house, my work, and the other places I used the laptop on a regular basis. Windows 10 wiped that out, and replaced it with "Let Windows manage my default printer", which behaves differently in one important and annoying way - it switches the default printer it associates with a given network to the last printer used. In other words, if you mostly use a specific printer when on a specific network, you probably want that one to be the default all of the time. But under the new Windows 8/10 scheme, it you need to use another printer, the act of using that other printer changes the default associated with that network. (This is the kind of thing that makes you wonder if everyone at Microsoft really uses Linux in their day-to-day work at Microsoft.) The bottom line is I wrote Network Printer Control to give me the old default printer behavior back, namely the default printer stays the way I set it even if I occasionally use other printers on the network. Network Drive Control is free and has a built in help function.

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